In the geological past, I sat on the engineering and earth science and major equipment committees of the Australian Research Council (ARC) in my capacity as a chair and senior scientist in my discipline. I also advised governments on special research centres and concurrently sat on the German and Swedish research councils.
My own research on the geochemistry of mineral deposits was supported by the ARC, Deutsches Forschungs Gemeinschaft, the mining industry, and my host university.
I trained numerous PhD researchers partially supported by the ARC, had ARC applications rejected and, with successful ARC projects involving field work, I often had to dip into my own pocket.
Since my time on ARC committees, the ARC has ‘streamlined’ the process, resulting in less personal contact between committees and grant applicants. Committees have become anonymous, there is more ticking of boxes and less considered judgment based on knowledge and experience. Before a grant application is submitted, the application is discussed with colleagues, given the seal of approval by the head of department, a university committee looks at the grant application and guides the process, the university submits the grant application to the ARC and the applicant patiently waits.
ARC committees used to read all applications, vet all applications, some were rejected and most were despatched to up to six reviewers. The ARC has a long list of reviewers around the world in all disciplines and any rigorous committee knows who’s who in the zoo. There are always divisions, camps supporting once thesis or another and mates. The pal review system using mates is, in my opinion, very efficient. It is always possible that as a reviewer, I might support a grant application, conference speaking invitation, travel grant, publication of research or academic promotion of one of my mates somewhere in the world and, in return, they might do this for me. Simple.
There is, I suspect, an unwritten rule: bury the grant application of competing folk from another camp or university. This leaves more grant money for the ‘good guys’. ARC committees can potentially bury an application by choosing one set of hostile reviewers from a rival camp or they can make sure that the application is successful by using another set of reviewers. When I served on the ARC, we would personally interview many, but not all, applicants and meet the applicants’ head of department, whether they be at James Cook University or the University of Western Australia. There were some outstanding individuals in many of the smaller allegedly non-prestigious universities which were supported. We made sure that we met and knew everyone in Australia in our discipline and that we also knew many of the reviewers personally. Interviews were to flesh out some points raised by reviewers and to guide younger academic staff about what is required to win a research grant. We knew who was in the competing camps, often made decisions not to send applications to hostile reviewers, deliberately supported about 5 per cent of applicants who some reviewers thought were inspired and others thought were nuts and, with major equipment, tried to get universities to work together. We took the opportunity to speak personally and privately with vice-chancellors about the quality of their staff and research, to strengthen our discipline nationwide and made suggestions about how they could strengthen our discipline in their university. Normally the budget was adjusted downwards and viewed favourably if training of masters or doctoral students was a part of the research program. Even at that time, we in the engineering and science disciplines were gobsmacked about the academic quality of grants and scholarships in the social sciences.
During my time on the ARC, we always met the Federal minister at a function in Canberra who instructed us to support applications that dealt with the war on cancer. I then was very supportive of researchers in meteorology and am bemused to see that many of the very same researchers have now called themselves climate scientists and that the minister has instructed funding to be spent on the war against climate. Follow the money.
At Macquarie University, Dr Abdel-Fattah would almost certainly have had to undergo a similar process to obtain an ARC grant. This shows her work was likely supported by the university at all levels, that the pal review system is probably alive and well and that the ARC may have made soft decisions unrelated to scholarship and the tax-paying community who actually fund the research. This does not, in my opinion, reflect well on Macquarie University. For university staff, ARC research money does not go into their own pockets. However, some junior researchers attached to the ARC research program can be financially supported and the winning of ARC grants can greatly help with academic promotion.
The story involving Dr Abdel-Fattah suggests that anti-Western culture, Woke, anti-scholarship and communist ideals in the university system are alive and well and that universities continue to not demonstrate common sense. Parents should seriously reconsider sending their children to universities that provide no training to be self-sufficient with productive employment yet incurring a massive HECS burden and that the ARC should pass grant proposals past a pub test committee to strike out academic nonsense.
For more than 30 years, Emeritus Professor Ian Plimer was a chair at The University of Newcastle, Ludwig Maximilians Universität München, The University of Melbourne and The University of Adelaide.
